Mr. Lundahl Repeating His Groundless Proclamations about the Origin of Moral Rules Doesn’t Not Make Them True
Kevin R. Henke
October 16, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I stated:
“No gods, angels, demons or a Bible are also needed to figure out how people should try to function in our environments. We should develop rules (morality) through reason and not Biblical dogma so that we can live peacefully with each other and our environment.”
Lundahl (2022j) then replies to my statements:
“The morality is here said to be rooted in reason. Now, the question is not whether an agency external to our reason is needed to enlighten it - it may be the case, and as Christians, both Lewis and I believe after the fall each has some kind of need of that. The questions are rather:
· where do universally valid rules of reason come from?
· does reason deal with any moral rules prior to its own developing of moral rules?
The point of chapters 3 and (I think) 4 is, the laws of chemistry and electronics and physics and the constraints of evolution do not put us into the reach of discovering what is universally valid. For our reason to do this, we need to be more than that. The sentence ‘[o]ur brains, thoughts and surroundings are all ultimately controlled by the laws of chemistry and physics,’ needs to be false, at least if implying ‘and nothing else.’”
In Henke (2022ay), I answered Mr. Lundahl’s question: “Where do universally valid rules of reason come from”:
“The “universally valid rules of reason” that Lundahl (2022j) references are solely human discoveries. There’s no need for anything beyond human reason (Dennett 2006). The rules are “universal” because they happen to work in a variety of circumstances from generation to generation. In ancient times, humans learned to develop morals so that members of the tribe could get along with each other. Otherwise, the tribe would fall apart. People needed to cooperate with each other to survive. They also learned how to make spears, avoid the berries that were poisonous, develop strategies for hunting, etc. Both of their technological and socialization (moral) skills came from reasoning and they passed that knowledge onto their children. Their children added to the knowledge and passed that onto their children, etc. In other words, ancient people discovered morality in the same way that they discovered how to make a spear – through reason and trial and error.
In more modern times, we discovered that slavery was not a good idea from rational debate and empathy for our fellow human beings, and certainly not from prayer and the Bible (Avalos 2011). We also learned that it’s not a good idea to dump toxins into the atmosphere and oceans. Through physics, chemistry and biology, we learned that pollution may not just “go away.” Each generation learns valuable and often painful lessons through reason, trail and error, and debate, and we try to pass that wisdom and knowledge unto the next generation along with our positive technological advances. There’s no evidence that any of our advances in reasoning and technology came from God or something ‘beyond Nature.’” [my emphasis in bold]
Lundahl (2022s) then replies to my bolded section:
“Except of course the evidence already mentioned a few times of universally valid rules of either morality or logic cannot develop as a part of nature. Or the universe cannot share its laws of being with us simply by the process of our pretended evolution from apes, who do not enjoy language and also do not enjoy logic.”
No. There’s no evidence that anything “beyond nature” is needed to explain the origin of morality or logic. People discover the moral laws that allow us to maximize societal harmony and maintain suitably clean environments so that we may survive and prosper. Many of these laws are universal simply because no human society can survive if it tolerates certain actions, such as murder or theft. Logic and mathematics are human inventions that describe the reality of our Universe. As I previously discussed in Henke 2022ck and Henke 2022hs, biologists have rational evolutionary explanations of how humans developed rational thought and language, and there’s no evidence that they have anything to do with creationism or the Towel of Babel (e.g., Belekou et al. 2022; Rhein et al. 2020; Jolly et al. 2020; Modroño et al. 2019; Schwartz et al. 2017; Fiddick et al. 2005; Goto et al. 2011; Bowling et al. 2002; Pagel 2017). Again, I hope that Mr. Lundahl will look up some of these references so that we can discuss them.
References:
Belekou, A., C. Papageorgiou, E. Karavasilis, E. Tsaltras, N. Kelekis, C. Klein, and N. Smymis. 2022. “Paradoxical Reasoning: An fMRI Study” Frontiers in Psychology, 13:850491. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.850491.
Bowling, D.L., J.C. Dunn, J.B. Smaers, M. Garcia, A. Sato, G. Hantke, S. Handschuh, S. Dengg, M. Kerney, A.C. Kitchener, M. Gumpenberger, and W.T. Fitch. 2020. “Rapid Evolution of the Primate Larynx?”, PLOS Biology, v. 18, n. 8, e3000764.
Fiddick, L., M.V. Spampinato and J. Grafman. 2005. “Social Contracts and Precautions Activate Different Neurological Systems: An fMRI Investigation of Deontic Reasoning” NeuroImage, v. 28, pp. 778-786.
Goto, M., O. Abe, T. Miyati, et al. 2011. “Entorhinal Cortex Volume Measured with 3T MRI is Positively Correlated with the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised Logical/Verbal Memory Score for Healthy Subjects”: Neuroradiology, v. 53, pp. 617-622.
Jolly, A.E., G.T. Scott, D.J. Sharp and A.H. Hampshire. 2020. “Distinct Patterns of Structural Damage Underlie Working Memory and Reasoning Deficits after Traumatic Brain Injury”, Brain, v. 143, pp. 1158-1176.
Modroño, C., G. Navarrete, A. Nicolle, J.L. González-Mora, K.W. Smith, M. Marling and V. Goel. 2019. “Developmental Grey Matter Changes in Superior Parietal Cortex Accompany Improved Transitive Reasoning”, Thinking and Reasoning, v. 25, n. 2, pp. 151-170.
Pagel, M. 2017. “Q&A: What is Human Language, When Did It Evolve and Why Should We Care?” BMC Biology, 15:64, 6pp, doi: 10.1186/s12915-017-0405-3.
Rhein, C., C. Mühle, B. Lenz, et al. 2020. “Association of a CAMK2A Genetic Variant with Logical Memory Performance and Hippocampal Volume in the Elderly” Brain Research Bulletin, v. 161, pp. 13-20.
Schwartz, F., J. Epinat-Duclos, J. Léone, and J. Prado. 2017. “The Neural Development of Conditional Reasoning in Children: Different Mechanisms for Assessing the Logical Validity and Likelihood of Conclusions”, NeuroImage, v. 163, pp. 264-275.